i can't help but pull the earth around me, to make my bed
by Widdrim
Summary: Obi-wan told himself it was the instability. That the way the wind chased the sand across Tatooine was too fractured to hold, let alone move. Memories of other deserts rushed to mind, of toppling columns on Geonosis, of hurling rocks as big as gunships. But earthbending was about waiting, listening for the right time to act. He hadn't been able to listen in a long time.


Tatooine was vast. Vast and relentless and dry and constantly shifting. There was nowhere solid to land here.

Obi-wan sat atop the cliffs, watching his little herd of banthas below as they grazed.

He couldn't see it, but the Lars homestead lay behind him on the other side of the mountains. Three years, he'd been here. The anniversary to the day, according to the standard calendar, but the days were longer on a planet with two suns, so he'd lost about a month.

Luke was three years old today.

If the boy was bending yet, it wasn't showing in any way the Lars had noticed. The day that happened, and it would happen, Beru would be hammering on his door for answers. Luke was her boy, and she would do whatever it took to take care of him. Whether Owen would let Ben train his nephew was… another matter.

Luke was Force sensitive, powerfully so, like his sister. But little Leia was in Bail's capable hands, and her parents would have to navigate that on their own.

No, better to focus on the present. What he could do. When Luke started bending, Ben had to be prepared to teach him, regardless of how it expressed itself.

Maybe Luke would a waterbender. A cruel twist for a child on Tatooine. Ben could hardly imagine the crushing dryness of it all, your own body the only reliable source even as the sun tried to wring it out of you.

Ben had always thought that if Padmé had been Force Sensitive, her negotiating skills would have made her an excellent waterbender. Luke might take after her temperament.

And Qui-gon had been a waterbender, one of the best. That difference had been the source of many of their arguments, but Ben had learned a lot from his old master. He could teach that.

In the end, it didn't particularly matter what Luke turned out to be. He had to be taught, and Ben was the only one left to teach him. Besides, all younglings learned the same basics, and Anakin had taken to bending so naturally—

Ben got to his feet. That was enough of that.

He climbed down to the banthas and herded them home well before dark.

His hut was small, an abandoned thing Owen had told him about. He never mentioned what happened to the previous owner, and Ben quickly realized that on Tatooine it was better not to ask.

Making it livable after even a short period of vacancy had taken most of his first months on the planet, and the work had kept him moving. And moving kept the ceaseless hurt at bay.

Ben set a pan on the single burner stove and poured in a handful of flattened grain and a splash of fresh bantha milk. Hardly a scientific approach, but it would make enough thick gruel to carry him to morning.

Outside, the evening wind gusted against the house. He'd have to go back out to double-check the pens, and he wasn't looking forward to the sand grains he'd certainly get in his beard and in his clothes. Keeping anything clean here was a losing battle, especially if he wasn't bending the dirt back out the door.

Ben frowned at the bubbling gruel. He hadn't earthbent in… a long time. It should have been the easiest possibility, Luke kicking up boulders and standing like a mountain.

He'd told himself it was the instability. That the way the wind chased the sand along was too granulated to hold let alone move. Memories of other deserts rushed to mind, of toppling columns on Geonosis, of hurling rocks as big as gunships.

It was true though. Earth bending was about waiting and listening for the right time to act. He hadn't been able to listen in a long time.

The hot pan seared his hand, dragging him rudely back to the present. Hissing, he flinched, and his elbow knocked the pot of grain to the ground. It shattered.

Brown grain spilled across the hard-packed dirt floor. Shards of red clay jutted at every angle, and plumes of dust and particulates rolled into the air.

Hand limp at his side, he stared at it. It lay still, a thousand pieces of earth starting back at him.

He turned on his heel and walked out of the hut, door banging behind him.

Ben stood in a metal hallway. A hallway on a Republic cruiser that stretched on forever in front of him. He closed his eyes and the hallway lights still shone in tight clusters behind his eyelids. Ghosts.

_Obi-wan. _

Ben whirled, only to face more infinite hallway. "Who's there?"

In the distance, too close, the sound of a squad of boots striking the steel floor echoed to him. He flinched hard. All the lights in the hallway dimmed but didn't turn to the emergency red lights he expected.

_Obi-wan. _

He shook his head. This was a dream. "I'm not listening to this."

He began to walk. His footsteps echoed quietly off the cold walls. No direction and no goal but to get away from the pounding feet of the troopers.

Voices echoed down the hall with distant, frantic blaster fire. Smoke. He smelled smoke. Ben walked faster.

_Obi-wan._

_Master!_

_I HATE YOU._

He clapped his hands over his ears. "I'm not listening!"

The ground collapsed under his foot. Ben staggered back, but the floor crumbled faster than he could retreat. He lunged for the wall. The floor collapsed. He plunged up to his waist in black sand and ash, and it burned. The footsteps were getting closer. He could hear screaming. He reached for the warped metal floor, but the sand dragged him down to his waist. His heart hammered, and the heat caught in his throat. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. The sand dragged him deeper.

_MASTER. _

The quicksand closed over his head, and he screamed.

He sat bolt upright and cracked his head on the ceiling above his own bed.

Reflexive tears stung his dry eyes. He put the heel of his hand to one eye and hissed. "Damn it."

The house was silent in response. This was the third time he'd had this dream since coming to Tatooine five years ago, and every time it ended the same. The weight of the earth entombing him.

Some of the peoples on Tatooine buried their dead that way, in deep graves where the heat and the dry turned corpses into mummies.

"I'm not dead yet," he said to the dark house. "Do you hear me?"

His voice cracked with dryness, and he could still taste ash. With a groan, Ben got to his feet and walked to the small condenser in the wall over the sink. It might have collected some moisture over the evening, and he would take his breakfast drier if it meant some relief now.

He poured a glass with half and inch of water and took a sip. The lukewarm water cleared some of the dust from his throat. Sighing, he set the glass on the counter and rubbed at his eyes.

The glass shook in his hand. Ben looked down, and the water rippled slightly. He frowned and turned on the overhead light. The water bounced off the walls of the glass, rings crisscrossing over themselves in a delicate lattice.

Qui-gon had done that sometimes with his tea. As a padawan, Ben had thought it was frivolous, but as he got older he'd realized it was a practice of minute control. A long time ago, he'd been able to do the same thing with tiny grains of sands. He couldn't do that anymore.

Ben inhaled and exhaled though his teeth. "Okay."

He wasn't dead yet.

The next morning, Ben cleared out a comet of his homestead and set up three stones in a new area he called the rock garden. It looked exactly like the rest of the ground around his hut, but the Temple had a rock garden for trusting young earth benders and it was the closest approximation he could get.

Ben gritted his teeth. There were chores he could be doing, should have been doing. Nothing on Tatooine did itself.

He thought of the dream. The scrambling, clawing to get out of his own element while the weight of it squeezed his to death.

If the Force was going to harass him instead of striking him dead like he'd asked on Mustafar, this might be the only way to shut it up.

He slid into a basic stance. Feet shoulder width, shoulders square like a padawan learning first forms. He took a deep breath then stepped forward and punched sharply at the nearest rock.

The stone stayed where it was.

Ben groaned and put his hands on his knees. This was going to be a long road.

Ben lay at the foot of a cliff. He couldn't remember how he'd gotten here with his limbs akimbo and his head ringing. A cloudless grey sky hung overtop the canyon's edge like a canopy.

Had he fallen? He'd been climbing. Trying to get somewhere but the climb had lasted forever. Hand over hand over hand and never seeming to make progress. His ears rang like an artillery cannon had gone off.

The pieces came back to him. He'd been climbing the walls of a dry river bed, a gorge where small lizards hid in the cracks. He'd misjudged a foothold. Reached too far. How far had he fallen?

The river bed was dry and cracked, and the ridges cut against his back. Was he bleeding? He couldn't tell.

Ridiculous. He'd survived a war for Force's sake, and what had finally gotten him was a damned rock face. Ben grimaced. There wasn't even anyone around to appreciate the irony.

_Obi-wan..._

He knew that voice. That presence... He really had gone and killed himself. He screwed his eyes shut.

_Obi-wan…_

"Shut up."

Something wet streaked his face. Was he crying?

Ben cracked one eye open. Another splash of wet hit his face then another. Falling from the grey-smeared sky.

Rain.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen rain.

_Are you listening? _

Obi-wan closed his eyes again and let the rain patter on his face. "Yes, master. I'm listening."

The water slowly cleared the heat and the dust from the air then from Obi-wan's skin. He lay there listening to it strike the earth, listening to the thunder in overhead. He felt the sand shifting, settling, accepting the sudden rain like an alm it would turn into blossoms and greenery. He lost track of how long he laid there. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe days.

Eventually, the rain slowed to a trickle. Obi-wan dragged a deep breath and pushed his hand against the sand. His fingers sunk into it a few inches, and the ringing in his head sounded like screams. He exhaled slowly, and the sand solidified under his palm to a near stone state, strong enough that his hand couldn't slip through. The howling in his head quieted like a calmed animal. The sand under his palm was stone, firm and cool to the touch.

For the first time in six years, Ben laughed.

Ben stood on the southern cliffs, binoculars in hand as he scanned the horizon. No Tuskens, no Kryt dragons. Just his little herd of banthas in the ravine below grazing on the sprawling brown shrubs.

Thirteen years he'd been here according to the standard calendar.

Luke's birthday had been three days ago. The boy was bright in the Force. Even at the distance Ben had kept, the boy was a sun the same as his father.

Ben would have to talk to Owen about getting the boy trained.

Seeing nothing on the horizon, he laid down his binoculars and shed his outer robes. He planted his feet and with a deep breath carved a boulder out of the ground and held it suspended at the height of his outstretched fist. Slowly, he carved out two more boulders and surrounded himself with the rocks and debris like planetary rings. Every grain of sand shone in his awareness, and he rose onto one foot and set the pieces of desert spinning around him. They turned as one, keeping a steady orbit around him as he moved through the elementary forms.

He closed his eyes and moved to harder forms, more precise, carving the boulders into smaller pieces and tracing them around each other, pulling the sand into rings and comets that danced.

Ben landed the final form and froze the stone in place. It hung suspended for a moment then sank back into the desert like it had never happened. Not even his boots left prints on the ground.

Sweat drenched his shirt, and he breathed hard. He was getting old.

After getting a drink, he donned his outer robes. The banthas were gone, but their footprints led out of the canyon back towards the house. They must have taken themselves home to get out of the midday sun.

"Damn." He rubbed his face and instantly regretted it. Sweat on sunburn wasn't anyone friend.

He slid down the cliff and followed after the bantha tracks. As he went, he waved his hand back and forth, sweeping the tracks from the earth. The last thing he needed was an unexpected visitor following him home. The trek back from the cliffs took him north, usually two hours, but the Force pulled him off course, towards the ridge dotted with evaporators. Owen Lars has made himself more than clear on how he felt about crazy old hermit Kenobi.

Keep to himself, keep trouble away from the homestead. And, most importantly, keep far away from Luke.

And for the most part, he'd done just that.

The southern ridge was grainy and steep, and with each step, Obi-wan had to stomp to solidify the sands enough to hold his weight. A gust of wind caught his robes, dragging him up the sandy slope.

Finally, he reached the top and stopped to rest, hands on his knees. That climb wasn't getting any easier.

"Hey!"

Ben looked up and squinted against the suns.

The young voice rang over the ridge. "Hey, there!"

Atop one of the nearby evaporators perched a sun. Ben blinked, and the light disappeared to a young boy.

Luke. He clung to the top of the evaporator with one hand, a wrench in the other, balanced in a precarious position that made Ben afraid for the boy's neck.

"You're old Ben, right?"

Ben straightened. "I am. You're Owen's nephew."

"Yup. You're not here to burgle the 'vaprators, are you?" Luke sounded pleasant enough, but he was sizing Ben up with sharp eyes. At the foot of the boy's perch, a droid with many steel arms chirruped indignantly and spun a tool around to shake at him.

Ben smiled wryly. "Hardly. I'm not sure what I'd do with evaporator parts even if I had them."

Luke mirrored the smile and leaped to the ground, landing so lightly the sand moved in light ripples. Maybe the boy was an earthbender, unconsciously scattering the impact of his landing into the sand. "That's good. Nice to meet you."

He stuck out his hand, and Ben shook it. Behind Luke, in the well-used land speeder, the long barrel of a battered rifle glinted in the suns' light. The boy was prepared. Good.

"What brings you this way?" Luke asked.

"A detour. I was headed home and found myself here. What brings you out here in the middle of the day?"

"Fixing the antenna. That last windstorm really did a number on this set." Luke flashed a bright smile. "You need a drink? It's pretty hot, and I'm just about done here."

How could he be so like his parents without ever meeting them? A pang shot through Ben's chest, but he smiled.

"That's a kind offer, but I wouldn't want to get you in trouble with your uncle."

Luke waved a hand. "Nah. It's okay. Pass me your canteen."

Ben obliged—it was empty, and he couldn't object to a gift like water.

Luke darted to the evaporator and punched in a long code string that opened the side of the metal cylinder. The condensation tank hissed as it came into contact with the hot midday air. The boy carefully twisted the spigot and let a few mouthfuls worth of clear water trickle into the canteen. He frowned. "There should be more than that."

"That's quite all right, Luke. I appreciate you—"

Luke banged his hand twice on the tank, and it rattled and hissed and gave up half a canteen's worth of water.

Ben blinked. Did he have heat stroke, or had Luke pulled moisture from Tatooine's air?

So the boy was a water bender. Ben has guessed right after all. He bowed his head and thanked the Force the boy wasn't a firebender like his father. Ben wasn't sure what he would have done.

Luke corked the canteen and returned it to the old hermit. "There you go. Should be enough to get you home."

"Thank you, Luke. That's very kind."

Luke nodded and put his hands on his hips. Then he frowned and patted his belt and looked around at the ground. "Have you seen my multitool?" Then he looked up where he'd been perched atop the ten-foot evaporator. "Oh, there it is."

He kicked, and suddenly he was fifteen feet in the air. A sharp gust of wind and sand grit caught Ben in its wake, and he raised a hand to protect his face.

An airbender.

Luke was an airbender. The first in over a decade. And he'd pulled water out of the air to offer a stranger.

Ben felt his heart quiver in his chest, but he kept an even expression. The next moment Luke landed back on the ground with a slight gust. He didn't even seem to notice he was doing it, or he might have been more careful about doing it in front of strangers. Granted, if the boy could leap that high without training, he could already outrun most sentients. Still, benders weren't safe, and on Tatooine, it wasn't only the Empire they had to worry about.

Luke landed again and hooked the tool to his belt. "Do you need a ride home?"

"It's a little out of your way."

"That's okay. Aunt Beru would have my hide if I let a neighbor hike home at this time of day. She thinks you're okay."

Well, that was a relief. Maybe Beru could talk Owen around to see Luke trained and able to use his bending to protect himself.

Luke gathered up his things, and he, Ben, and the droid piled into the land speeder. The boy tucked the rifle away but still in easy reach and got the speeder humming to life.

"Sorry," he said. "This old thing can be a bumpy ride."

"Appreciated." Ben secured himself in the speeder and glanced sidelong at the young pilot. "Tell me, Luke. What do you know about Jedi?"


End file.
